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The fight against white supremacy could learn something from America's first war on terror
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fight-against-white-supremacy-could-learn-something-from-americas-first-war-on-terror/2019/04/08/e7b088da-5a0f-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html?utm_term=.2b914a0a667c&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
One hundred forty-eight years ago this month, a member of Congress decried what he saw as a double standard regarding the protection of U.S. citizens from political violence. Overseas, Rep. Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts said on the floor of the House, “no nation .?.?. can unjustly lay its hand upon an American citizen in arrest or anger without calling down upon it the whole power of the republic.”
Yet at that very moment in the American South, Butler noted, a domestic organization, the Ku Klux Klan, was murdering blacks and whites who supported the post-Civil War program of racial equality known as Reconstruction, and the Klan was operating with virtual impunity.
“Can it be,” Butler demanded of those who insisted crime-fighting should be left up to the states, “that an American citizen is protected with the whole power of the government, everywhere, except on our own soil, under his own roof-tree, and covered by our own flag?”
Congress duly passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, and President Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law on April 20, 1871. The federal government could suspend the writ of habeas corpus in Klan-dominated areas and use federal marshals and troops to arrest Klan terrorists and bring them to trial in federal courts.
To this day, it remains arguably the toughest federal law ever aimed specifically at a white supremacist terrorist threat. It launched what might be called the first U.S. war on terror, including the use of covert operatives — detectives from the Secret Service — to infiltrate the Klan.
As if to mark the occasion, congressional Democrats, led by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), have just introduced the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, whose premise, like Butler’s, is that terrorism is terrorism — whether it originates at home or abroad, on the racist right or the Islamist fringe.
One hundred forty-eight years ago this month, a member of Congress decried what he saw as a double standard regarding the protection of U.S. citizens from political violence. Overseas, Rep. Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts said on the floor of the House, “no nation .?.?. can unjustly lay its hand upon an American citizen in arrest or anger without calling down upon it the whole power of the republic.”
Yet at that very moment in the American South, Butler noted, a domestic organization, the Ku Klux Klan, was murdering blacks and whites who supported the post-Civil War program of racial equality known as Reconstruction, and the Klan was operating with virtual impunity.
“Can it be,” Butler demanded of those who insisted crime-fighting should be left up to the states, “that an American citizen is protected with the whole power of the government, everywhere, except on our own soil, under his own roof-tree, and covered by our own flag?”
Congress duly passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, and President Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law on April 20, 1871. The federal government could suspend the writ of habeas corpus in Klan-dominated areas and use federal marshals and troops to arrest Klan terrorists and bring them to trial in federal courts.
To this day, it remains arguably the toughest federal law ever aimed specifically at a white supremacist terrorist threat. It launched what might be called the first U.S. war on terror, including the use of covert operatives — detectives from the Secret Service — to infiltrate the Klan.
As if to mark the occasion, congressional Democrats, led by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), have just introduced the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, whose premise, like Butler’s, is that terrorism is terrorism — whether it originates at home or abroad, on the racist right or the Islamist fringe.
After every white terrorist attack we see people on political forums tell us "he doesn't have a political agenda so it's not terrorism".
There's a false sense of security in believing the threat is foreign and looks different. It's an uncomfortable thought to admit that dangerous people live among us and look like anyone else in our country. And it's an infuriating thought (to some people) to open any possibility of white guys with guns being treated the same as unarmed brown people in airports or unarmed black males anywhere.
If America isn't ready for police to stop and talk to white guys open carrying assault rifles or prosecute white mass murderers with terrorism laws, then we should try it anyway and see what happens.
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